Vaccine imbalance creates a two-track pandemic: WHO

Mirriam Madiye

Features Writer

The World Health Organisation (WHO), has urged the world to come together to address imbalances affecting Covid -19 vaccines distribution.

In his opening remarks at the WTO –WHO high level dialogue: Expanding Covid -19 vaccine manufacture to promote equitable access WHO, Director –General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that there is an imbalance in the global distribution of vaccines.

“But there remains a shocking imbalance in the global distribution of vaccines. This has created a two-track pandemic: the haves are opening up, while the have-nots are locking down.

Over 3.5 billion vaccines have been distributed globally, but more than 75 percent of those have gone to just ten countries,” he said.

He highlighted that vaccines alone cannot solve the pandemic but there is need for rapid diagnostics and life- saving therapeutics which are vital too.

Dr Adhanom Ghebreyesus added that there is need for vaccine sharing across the world and scaling up of numbers of vaccines produced.

“Our global targets are to vaccinate at least 10 percent of the population of every country by September, at least 40 percent by the end of the year, and 70 percent by mid-next year. These are the critical milestones we must reach together to end the pandemic,” he said.

He said to reach those targets, 11 billion doses of vaccines are needed.

“Urgent dose sharing is vital to fill our current supply gap. But dose sharing is a short-term solution. We must spare no effort to increase vaccine supply for lower-income countries. We need to dramatically scale up the number of vaccines being produced,” he said.

Dr Adhanom Ghebreyesus added that there is need for the private sector to give support to the production of vaccines to achieve the 70 percent target of vaccinating the population in all the countries.

“Whatever options we use, the most important is increasing the production capacity significantly so there is enough pie to share, there are enough vaccines to achieve the 70 percent by mid-next year and open up the world and bring lives and livelihoods to normality,” he said.

WHO and COVAX partners announced the first COVID mRNA vaccine technology transfer hub, to be set up in South Africa.

Currently the world is currently battling with wave of infections, deaths and variants such as the Delta variant.

The variant has spread to over 100 countries in the world.